Sena USB Bluetooth Adapter 300m Working Dist, UD100-G03 (300m Working Dist. Exchangeable Antenna, Bluesoleil Driver (Works with Microsoft Bluetooth Driver))

Recently, I became interested in home automation. I have three Yale Assure 2 locks in my house which I wanted to integrate into Home Assistant - I have Home Assistant Green. My Yale locks communicate via bluetooth so I needed to find a compatible bluetooth dongle. I experimented with a bluetooth proxy device (Shelly plug) but was unsuccessful, but please keep in mind that I just started using Home Assistant so this may be a user error (also, I did not like that the smart plug was getting hot without anything plugged into it). Instead, I purchased this USB bluetooth adapter. As noted by other reviewers, this works perfectly with Home Assistant Green, which immediately recognized it. Once it was configured in Home Assistant, it immediately recognized my Yale locks also. With this bluetooth capability, I can press one button to open the garage door (wifi), disarm my Blink (wifi), and unlock the door to the house (bluetooth) at the same time! There is a concern regarding interference and suggested to use a USB extension cable to place it further away from Home Assistant Green, which I have not done, but I will keep an eye out for now and update this review as I use it more.

Was honestly expecting more hassle setting this up with Home Assistant, but this little dongle surprised me. Pretty much plug and play - just stuck it in, did some basic config in Home Assistant, and boom - Bluetooth connectivity achieved.I say "almost" plug and play because there were a couple quick setup steps in HA, but nothing complicated. Range is decent for what it is, and it's been stable - no random disconnects or weird behavior that you sometimes get with cheap Bluetooth adapters.If you are using Home Assistant in a docker container make sure to expose the DBus socker this should be added to your docker configvolumes:- /run/dbus:/run/dbus:roThen on a debian-based operating system install BlueZ which is needed to use the bluetooth dongle.sudo apt-get -y install bluez

READERS SHOULD NOTE THAT THIS IS A REVIEW FOR THE SENA UD100 ADAPTER, NOT THE BLUE SOLEIL SOFTWARE PROVIDED WITH THE ADAPTER. Blue Soleil is a third party application that the manufacturer includes for Windows users because Microsoft has never done a good job supporting Bluetooth. If you are a Windows user, there may well be other software stacks you can install if you don't care for Blue Soleil.Received this item after an abortive attempt to purchase prior to the item being stocked by Amazon. I ordered this as a replacement for an ancient Zoom Telephonics 4311 Class One Bluetooth that was literally falling apart.Running a computer with Linux Mint 17.2 running Blueman-manager 2.0.1. I simply plugged the adapter in, the bluetooth manager immediately recognized the device, and started pairing devices to the adapter. Didn't need to run Blue Soleil at all (that is a hint for you Windows users...you may want to reconsider your OS).After I got the adapter set up with some Bluetooth devices I decided to go on walkabout through my house and around my yard -- I was able to effectively use my headset completely through the house and completely through my yard (up to 100 feet away -- and with a number of walls in between me and the bluetooth adapter). It worked flawlessly and with no dropouts -- telling me that I was nowhere near the edge of the range of this adapter even at the farthest reaches of my yard -- and that is EXACTLY why I purchase the device (FTW!!).The pros: excellent range for a reasonable price. There are far too few Class 1 Bluetooth adapters out there and only a couple that have external antennas. Negligible delay in processing signals -- audio and video remains perfectly synced when streaming videos. While this is a bit more expensive than the Class IV micro dongles that are out there, you get what you pay for.The cons: the adapter is marketed as an industrial computing device (in fact, if you look at third party sites, the ones that carry the device are industrial computing / automation distributors). This device is clearly not made for industrial computing as it in a cheap plastic housing that would not stand up to much abuse at all. From that, this is something you would probably want to plug into a desktop computer or a laptop being used as a desktop replacement, not a laptop being used on the road (I can see it being knocked through normal laptop usage). The quality of the case is the only reason why I gave this a four-star review rather than a five star review.

Plugged it in, oppened the Home Assistant phone app and bingo there it was. Zero hassle. HA happily then saw my Air Things Wave Radon through bluetooth instantly. Perfect. The connection down one floor from the dongle is kind of weak, but that's possibly due to wifi, zigbee dongle and a TV in the way. Other devices (Thermo Pro temp/humidity monitors) distributed in 4 other directions work fine.

Despite what the Quick Start Guide and Amazon listing says, the device does not seem to be supported on Windows 10.The generic bluetooth drivers did not work at all, which didn't particularly surprise me. So, I spent the time to pull the files off the provided CD.While the bluesoleil software seems to install fine, it certainly does not seem to work. The userland application freezes for a few moments quite easily, and never ever seems to see devices that my weaker, cheaper, crappier bluetooth dongles see quite easily. The driver installed does not appear to have errored in any obvious way as there's no errors in logs or device manager, but Windows 10 certainly does not support interfacing with the device in its official settings page. Without a working custom userland app nor the official Windows interface to interact with the bluetooth dongle to connect to anything, it appears to be useless on Windows.Potentially works on Linux still, but never checked. Also, potentially works with whatever paid, make-an-account service you see visiting one of their websites, but might as well just get a much fancier dongle if you're going to be paying more on top of the hardware cost.

The adapter provides decent speeds and coverage for the price, but the signal can sometimes be spotty, especially in areas with heavy interference. It's a good budget option, but don't expect flawless performance in all environments.

perfect BT distance, 100% working with Home Assistant